Simms/ Arulanandam/ Mundy/ Cryptid Ens - Bestiaries

For the past decade, award-winning Canadian composer Bekah Simms has been carefully crafting an auditory universe that is hers alone. Simms' rich, brilliant music offers the perfect paradox for the present moment: it's at once totally accessible and yet completely uncompromising. It's music that takes a strange enough route through what has now become familiar topography, that it leaves the listener utterly bewildered. BESTIAIRES displays her bold imagination on a far wider canvas than either of her previous outings. Featuring chamber orchestral forces, and, on two pieces, amplified solo parts plus vivid real-time electronic environments, the recording is full of movement, detail, and wildly contrasting hues, all of which churn together into something at once lyrical and violent, atmospheric, and foreboding. BEKAH SIMMS hails from St. John's, Newfoundland and is currently based in Glasgow, Scotland after nine years living and working in Toronto. Her music has been widely performed across North America and Europe. She has been commissioned by some of the top interpreters of contemporary music in both Canada and internationally, such as Crash Ensemble, Eighth Blackbird, l'Ensemble Contemporain de Montréal, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, Thin Edge New Music Collective, Esprit Orchestra, Continuum Contemporary Music, Ensemble Télémaque, Ensemble Paramirabo, and But What About?